Pasados Special Issue: Against the Past/Contra Pasados

Co-edited by Jesse Alemán (University of New Mexico) and Evelyn Soto (Rutgers University—New Brunswick)

Deadline: January 15, 2026

Call for papers

Undisciplined Anthropologies: Practices, Trajectories, and Imaginations Beyond “Method”

Cultures and Societies Department, University of Palermo, Italy

Institut Français, Palermo, Italy

International Conference

30th, 31rst October 2025

Institut Français Palermo

Via Paolo Gili 4, 90138, Palermo

Deadline for abstracts: September 25th, 2025

Literary criticism is often treated as a secondary act, the intellectual afterimage of the work it addresses. This seminar proceeds from the opposite premise: criticism can be understood as a compositional art, a practice that gathers elements from different media, genres, and historical moments in order to propose a world in which the work might live. The critic does not merely interpret but constructs, weaving together forms, narratives and temporalities to re-situate a work within a newly configured cultural space, animated by the critical desire to imagine and construct more just and inhabitable worlds. 

NeMLA 2026 will be held in Pittsburgh, PA from March 5-8.

Book Series Title: Contemporary Literary Studies on Language and Literature
Publisher: HJ Verlag Maurer – Maurer Press, Frankfurt, Germany
Website: www.maurer.press

We invite contributions for the next volume of our series, Contemporary Literary Studies on Language and Literature. This volume is dedicated to exploring feminist perspectives in literature and culture, providing a platform for work that highlights the diverse ways feminism continues to shape literary scholarship.

Book Series Title: Contemporary Literary Studies on Language and Literature
Publisher: HJ Verlag Maurer – Maurer Press, Frankfurt, Germany
Website: www.maurer.press

Book Series Title: Contemporary Literary Studies on Language and Literature
Publisher: HJ Verlag Maurer – Maurer Press, Frankfurt, Germany
Website: www.maurer.press

We are delighted to invite contributions for the upcoming third volume of our book series, Contemporary Literary Studies on Language and Literature. This volume turns its focus to postcolonial approaches in literary studies, bringing together scholarship that explores the cultural, political, and historical dimensions of literature shaped by colonial encounters and their legacies.

At a time when any strides that may have been made towards reproductive rights have been thrown into serious question, motherhood—its lived reality, its spectre, and its implications for theory—remains a fraught and undertheorized field. As Adrienne Rich put it in 1976, “we know more about the air we breathe, the seas we travel, than we do about the nature and meaning of motherhood”—and this statement continues to be true nearly fifty years later despite the proliferation of media, both fictional and nonfictional, that takes motherhood as its object. The very definition of “motherhood” continues to be contested even as its boundaries expand and encompass an increasing number of subject positions and relational modes.

Panel Title: Queer Gothic as Resistance: Subverted Classed and Gendered Binaries in 21st-Century Fiction

Conference: Queer–Class Relations Conference

Dates: April 17–18, 2026

Venue: CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York City

Presentation Mode: Online

Panel Chair: Faham Zeeshan (fahamzeeshan82@gmail.com)

Co-Chair & Convener: Dr. Muhammad Numan (UMT, Lahore) (muhammad.nauman@umt.edu.pk / nauman.sa18@gmail.com)

Bureaucratic Modernism

Edited by Alexandra Irimia and Jonathan Foster

Both modernist literature and modern bureaucracy reshaped how societies imagined authority, individuality, and the written word. Modernist authors not only depicted bureaucracy—they absorbed and transformed its textual forms, procedural rhythms, and rationalized aesthetics. This volume takes that convergence as its starting point, asking how the rise of administrative culture in the early twentieth century influenced modernist style, and how modernist experimentation in turn reframed the experience of bureaucracy.

Note: All abstracts must be submitted through the Annual Meeting and Membership portal at  https://www.xcdsystem.com/asecs/member/

You do not need to be a member to submit an abstract through the portal; however, you must be a member of ASECS to present at the conference. The panel chair cannot submit the abstract on your behalf.

With the increasing popularity of game studies, academic departments are striving to accommodate potential students. This panel is designed for participants to share their approaches to teaching game studies, either at the undergraduate or graduate level. This will be in roundtable format, and participants are encouraged to bring materials (syllabi, course packets, other media). A multiplicity of approaches is welcome, whether participants teach in game design, critical studies, or pedagogy/rhetoric.

To participate, submit a syllabus for a course you have taught recently or are about to teach in academic year 2025-2026. Also, note that this proposed panel needs to be approved in October by the Program Committee.

https://samla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19446

This panel seeks papers that explore how American literature has shaped--and been shaped by--knowledge of the natural world, from the transcendental reflections of the 19th century to contemporary ecofeminst and ecocritical perspectives. How have authors translated environmental observation and ecological awareness into literary forms of knowledge? How does nature writing reflect evolving understandings of identity, power, science, and stewardship.

Description

To bend a phrase by Fredric Jameson, narrative is a historically symbolic act. Literary
scholars and historians have long argued that not only are texts implicated in the time, place,
political events, and economic forces in which they get produced, but they also produce their
own ideas of and uses for history. Indeed, for Marxist, psychoanalytical, and deconstructive
critics (among other schools of thought), a text’s historical contingency needs to be rigorously
elaborated to determine how it works across varied sites (from social to political) and
contexts (from academic to public); moreover, to differing degrees, they all agree that it is

Thursday 4th December 2025, The National Archives, Kew, UK.

‘Talking Records’ is a new collections-based symposium held at The National Archives every year. The theme for 2025 is pollution. Histories of pollution, contamination, and environmental damage can be found in a diverse range of records in the collections at The National Archives.  

Call For Papers

Issue VI: Re - Defining Work

Perspectives is a bilingual double-blind peer-reviewed, annual E-journal published by Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi with eISSN 2583 - 4762.

An emerging and essential field of academic enquiry, with numerous avenues of interdisciplinary interventions, is the concept of ‘Work’.

The 21st century is grappling with an influx of AI, and the increasing pressure to automate has raised some critical questions about the nature and concept of work, and its relationship with societies and cultures.

The International Congress of Videogames, Virtual Environments and Interactive Creation is an event of scientific and academic dissemination whose objective is the diffusion of studies related to the field of videogames, digital art and online and virtual environments, in its wide range of topics and media: development of ludic and interactive platforms; video game studies (Game Studies); initiatives around eSports; expressions of Digital Art, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence applied to ludic or plastic creation; projects in networked communities and mobile devices; e-learning platforms; games and digital artistic works and their imbrications with cinema, animation, music, comics, etc. 

Call for Submissions – Woman Scream Cause For fifteen years, the international Woman Scream (Grito de Mujer) cause has united voices from around the globe through poetry, art, and storytelling, amplifying awareness for women’s and girls’ rights. We now invite poets, short story writers, and visual artists to submit original work for our upcoming printed volume. This is an opportunity to contribute your creativity to a global movement that uses art as a form of activism, solidarity, and change.Participation is open worldwide to creators over 18.

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025) was released by the director’s production company, Proximity Media, to massive fanfare. According to The Tennessee Tribune, Sinners is the first horror film in thirty-five years to earn a grade of ‘A’ on CinemaScore exit polls and boasts “nearly unanimous rave reviews” (April 24-30, 2025). A massive box office success, Sinners raked in a stunning $45.6 million during its debut weekend. This figure, as well as other factors, have invited comparisons to Jordan Peele’s Us (2019), the current record holder for biggest debut of an original film ($71 million).

37th Annual Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Conference

DeLand, Florida

April 17-18, 2026

Call for Papers

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society, an organization of over 200 members worldwide, invites paper proposals on topics related to Rawlings’s life and works.  

Topics might include the following:

Embracing Glocality:

New Perspectives on Arab and Anglophone Arab Literature and Film

Glocalization—the simultaneous presence of global and local dynamics—offers a critical lens through which to examine Arab and Anglophone Arab cultural production. This special issue invites papers that explore how literary and cinematic texts from or about the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region reflect, negotiate, or resist the pressures of global cultural flows while rooted in specific local contexts.

This Seminar Session for the Renaissance Society of America 2026 Conference in San Francisco, CA is still seeking participants! This session is sponsored by ACMRS. 

Panel: International Congress for Medieval Studies, University of Western Michigan, Kalamzoo (May 14-16 2026)

Call for Creative Pieces (Issue III)Thing-Poetry 

Things bear world, World grants things.
Poetry, Language, Thought, Martin Heidegger1